West End, Yorkshire

West End
Village
Ruined mill on Capelshaw Beck
West End
Location within North Yorkshire
Civil parish
Unitary authority
Ceremonial county
Region
CountryEngland
Sovereign stateUnited Kingdom

West End was a village in the Washburn Valley of the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, which was depopulated when the valley was flooded to form Thruscross Reservoir in the 1960s. The village was 4 miles (6.4 km) south-west of Dacre (its nearest railway station), 5 miles (8 km) south of Pateley Bridge, and 10 miles (16 km) north of Otley. A hamlet called West End still exists in the area, and is to the south-west of the reservoir.

History

Several mills were located in the village on the Capelshaw Beck and also on the River Washburn which processed corn, cotton and hemp.[1] However, this industry suffered when steam power replaced water power during the 19th century,[2] and other mills in the West Riding had access to coal to power the mills via the railways, but the availability to the mills in the Washburn Valley of coal was very limited.[3] The other mills could then out-produce the mills in the Washburn Valley.[4] A dame school was also located in the village which catered to the local population.[5] The village was also named interchangeably as Thruscross (or Thurscross) and was in the ancient ecclesiastical parish of Fewston.[6] However, due to the number of mills built on the River Washburn and its tributaries in the West End area, the village of West End was afforded its own parish.[7] The name West End has been suggested to be derived from the fact that it was at the west end of Fewston parish.[1]

The road leading north-east from the village went 4 miles (6.4 km) to Dacre, with Dacre being listed as the nearest railway station in 1927 when the Nidd Valley Railway was still in use.[8][9] The village was also 5 miles (8 km) south of Pateley Bridge, 11.5 miles (18.5 km) east of Skipton, and 10 miles (16 km) north of Otley.[6][10]

The village was partly depopulated in the 19th century by a typhus outbreak (1838–1840), and some of the inhabitants left the dale to find work after the mills closed down.[11] The village was certainly completely deserted by 1911, long before the flooding of the valley.[12] The new reservoir covered 142 acres (57 ha) of land, including the Little Inn which was built in 1699, the chapel, which had been elevated to church status in the 19th century (c. 1873) as the Church of the Holy Trinity,[1] and the remains of five mills.[13][14] The churchyard was moved onto the high moor to the east and is still there today.[15] Arthur Mee alleges that one of the mills used children to work its looms and the "brutal masters" kept them at the looms until they were exhausted, working 76-hour weeks and only having two holidays a year; Christmas Day and the July feast day.[16][17]

Leeds Corporation built the three reservoirs on the River Washburn south of Blubberhouses, but although they started buying up land from 1896, they turned their attention for water supply to the Colsterdale valley west of Masham (the Leighton Reservoir).[18] As the Leeds Corporation bought most of the land in the upper valley (ostensibly to prevent pollution and other building works going ahead), the farmers and villagers found themselves to be tenants of the corporation.[19] The village was finally cleared in 1960, to allow for work to be undertaken in preparation for the Thruscross Reservoir scheme.[20] Some of the old mill buildings were left intact as the owners, who had emigrated to America, could not be traced, so the permission to demolish could not be acquired.[21] Various stones from the mills were used to build a new church, All Saints, on the western shore of the reservoir, which itself closed soon afterwards as the depopulated area could not support the numbers of people needed for a congregation.[22] The flooding of the settlement was partly the inspiration of Peter Robinson's novel In a Dry Season.[23]

The name of the settlement persists in the hamlet of West End, which is to the south west of Thruscross Reservoir and it is in the Thruscross civil parish.[24][25]

References

  1. ^ a b c Buckton, Henry (2008). The lost villages: in search of Britain's vanished communities. London: I. B. Tauris. p. 100. ISBN 9781845116712.
  2. ^ Muir 1985, p. 224.
  3. ^ Priestman, Howard (1906). Principles of worsted spinning. London: Longman, Green & Company. p. 21. OCLC 1050713885.
  4. ^ Pill, David Halton (1977). Yorkshire, the West Riding. London: Batsford. p. 62. ISBN 0713431881.
  5. ^ Grainge, William (1895). The History & Topography of the Townships of Little Timble, Great Timble and. London: Walker & Sons. p. 140. OCLC 08645313.
  6. ^ a b Kelly, E. R., ed. (1881). Kelly's Directory of West Riding of Yorkshire, 1881. [Part 1: County Information & Places A-K] (6 ed.). London: Kelly's Directories. p. 339. OCLC 1131686820. Thurscross (or Thruscross), commonly called West End....
  7. ^ Parkinson, Thomas, ed. (1899). The Registers of the Parish Church: 1593–1723. Skipton: Craven Herald Office. p. 1. OCLC 4996261.
  8. ^ Grainge, William (1863). Nidderdale: Or, An Historical, Topographical, and Descriptive Sketch of the Valley of the Nidd. London: Thomas Thorpe. p. 75. OCLC 6678669.
  9. ^ Wright, Geoffrey Norman (1985). Roads and trackways of the Yorkshire Dales. Ashbourne: Moorland. p. 38. ISBN 0861901231.
  10. ^ Langdale, Thomas (1822). A topographical dictionary of Yorkshire; containing the names of all the towns, villages, hamlets. Northallerton: J. Langdale. p. 443. OCLC 1040639280.
  11. ^ Muir 1985, pp. 224–225.
  12. ^ McTominey, Andrew (August 2020). "A Tale of Two Yorkshire Villages: The Local Environmental Impact of British Reservoir Development, c. 1866–1966". Environment & History. 26 (3). White Horse Press: 347. ISSN 0967-3407.
  13. ^ Muir 1985, p. 227.
  14. ^ "Snapshots before the deluge". The Yorkshire Post. 6 December 1997. p. 10. ISSN 0963-1496.
  15. ^ "A dam good walk". York Press. 19 July 2003. Retrieved 26 October 2025.
  16. ^ Mee, Arthur, ed. (1942) [1941]. The King's England; Yorkshire the West Riding. London: Hodder & Stoughton. p. 414. OCLC 655198103.
  17. ^ "Romance of a Yorkshire Bell". The Leeds Mercury. No. 31, 101. 9 August 1939. p. 8. OCLC 11968069. that not so very long ago this place peace and quiet was one of noisy looms, where children worked 76 hours week with but two holidays a year—Christmas Day and the village feast in July.
  18. ^ Bowtell, Harold D. (1991). Lesser Railways of the Yorkshire Dales and the Dam Builders in the Age of Steam. Plateway Press. pp. 10, 33. ISBN 1-871980-09-7.
  19. ^ McTominey 2025, p. 161.
  20. ^ Muir 1985, p. 225.
  21. ^ Edenbrow, John (28 May 1953). "Site for a reservoir". Country Life. CXIII (2, 941): 1,708. ISSN 0045-8856.
  22. ^ Buckton, Henry (2008). The lost villages: in search of Britain's vanished communities. London: I. B. Tauris. p. 101. ISBN 9781845116712.
  23. ^ Kitchen, Ruby (23 July 2022). "Remains of lost village revealed in reservoir shallows as Yorkshire sees highest water use in 15 years". Yorkshire Post. Archived from the original on 9 November 2024. Retrieved 25 October 2025.
  24. ^ "Election Maps". Ordnance Survey. Retrieved 27 October 2025. On the left of the screen is the "Boundary" tab; click this and activate either civil parishes or Westminster Constituencies (or both), however, only two functions can be active at any one time.
  25. ^ "Gazetteer of British Place Names West End, Yorkshire". Gazetteer. Retrieved 3 December 2025.

Sources

  • Muir, Richard (1985). The lost villages of Britain. London: Book Club Associates. OCLC 13341378.
  • McTominey, Andrew (2025). Waterscapes: reservoirs, environment and identity in modern England and Wales. London: University of London Press. ISBN 9781915249104.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.